[Footnote 454:  Bougainville, Journal.]

Early in September a band of New England rangers came to Winslow’s camp, with three prisoners taken within the lines of Ticonderoga.  Their captain was Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire,—­a strong, well-knit figure, in dress and appearance more woodsman than soldier, with a clear, bold eye, and features that would have been good but for the ungainly proportions of the nose.[455] He had passed his boyhood in the rough surroundings of a frontier village.  Growing to manhood, he engaged in some occupation which, he says, led him to frequent journeyings in the wilderness between the French and English settlements, and gave him a good knowledge of both.[456] It taught him also to speak a little French.  He does not disclose the nature of this mysterious employment; but there can be little doubt that it was a smuggling trade with Canada.  His character leaves much to be desired.  He had been charged with forgery, or complicity in it, seems to have had no scruple in matters of business, and after the war was accused of treasonable dealings with the French and Spaniards in the west.[457] He was ambitious and violent, yet able in more ways than one, by no means uneducated, and so skilled in woodcraft, so energetic and resolute, that his services were invaluable.  In recounting his own adventures, his style is direct, simple, without boasting, and to all appearance without exaggeration.  During the past summer he had raised a band of men, chiefly New Hampshire borderers, and made a series of daring excursions which gave him a prominent place in this hardy by-play of war.  In the spring of the present year he raised another company, and was commissioned as its captain, with his brother Richard as his first lieutenant, and the intrepid John Stark as his second.  In July still another company was formed, and Richard Rogers was promoted to command it.  Before the following spring there were seven such; and more were afterwards added, forming a battalion dispersed on various service, but all under the orders of Robert Rogers, with the rank of major.[458] These rangers wore a sort of woodland uniform, which varied in the different companies, and were armed with smooth-bore guns, loaded with buckshot, bullets, or sometimes both.

[Footnote 455:  A large engraved portrait of him, nearly at full length, is before me, printed at London in 1776.]

[Footnote 456:  Rogers, Journals, Introduction (1765).]

[Footnote 457:  Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, VI. 364. Correspondence of Gage, 1766.  N.Y.  Col.  Docs., VII. 990.  Caleb Stark, Memoir and Correspondence of John Stark, 386.]

[Footnote 458:  Rogers, Journals.  Report of the Adjutant-General of New Hampshire (1866), II. 158, 159.]